“Now I’d like to recognize our two award-winning researchers and thesis writers for 2016.”

On April 3 in the Carnegie Room, Director of the Honors Program and Professor of English Heather Hayton announced the winners of the 2016 Hege Library Research Award.

Last year, the Hege Library Research Award was created with contributions from Curt Hege ’56 and Patricia Hege ’57 as well as from the Guilford College Friends of the library organization. The award was created to celebrate the 25-year anniversary of the 1989 library additions, which were also funded by the Hege family and resulted in the library being named ‘Hege’ from that point forward.

“We paid tribute to the Hege family and principal donors Curt and Pat Hege for their commitment and vision 25 years ago,” said Suzanne Bartels, director of library services and instructional technology.

“And I also want to express our ongoing appreciation of the Guilford College Friends of the library and the members of the Board of the Friends especially for their dedicated efforts, which vitally support the library in so many ways.”

The Hege Library Award selection committee annually chooses two students to reward excellent senior research with a $1,000 prize for the students’ personal use. This year, the committee honored two Guilford seniors with the Hege Library Research Award: Sydney Brown, a senior majoring in art and psychology, and Emma Rountree, a senior history major.

Brown wrote her thesis on the experiences of cis women, which she defined as women who identify with the gender they were assigned at birth, and trans individuals, those who do not identify as such, on the basis of relationships between genital self-image, body esteem, willingness to communicate and media consumption.

“I am very interested in the socio-cultural contexts that surround the construction of the body and identity,” said Brown in an email interview. “For my research, I focused on genitalia because it is the crux of the sex/gender binaries, making it an important topic of discussion for cis women and gender minorities, especially in feminist discourse and psychological research.”

Brown’s thesis, alongside those of other Guilford seniors, is not just a source of good writing. It also serves to help make complex and often under-studied topics more understandable.

“Sydney’s findings and empirical evidence from her administered surveys increase our understanding of factors related to body image in the trans community and, perhaps, will help us increase safe options for trans people to discuss body and health issues,” said Hayton.

Rountree completed her senior research on Queen Marie of Romania’s 1926 tour of America. She surveyed the cultural themes of gender, celebrities and mass media to examine how Queen Marie constructed her own popular image.

“I’m really interested in the descendants of Queen Victoria, and Marie was one of her granddaughters,” said Rountree in an email interview. “When I was looking into topics for my thesis, I was reading the memoirs of several of Victoria’s grandchildren. As I read Marie’s book ‘The Story of My Life,’ I realized what a fascinating person she was, and then I found out about the American tour.”

Doing thorough research means digging below the surface in order to bring to light things that have been kept in the dark. Rountree utilized a variety of sources to compile information on the twentieth-century transnational culture.

“Emma worked closely with Hege librarians and her history mentor to find an array of textual artifacts from library archives and rare books rooms,” said Hayton. “In doing so, her project also examines the cultural mechanisms of popular celebrity in the 1920s.”

Both of this year’s winners plan to continue work in their academic areas after graduating from Guilford. Brown plans to earn a master’s degree in art therapy, and Rountree will work on a master’s degree in history at the University of Georgia.